‘Bloody’ School Shooting Drills in Vogue

• Experts say this approach to school safety could actually make death tolls worse.

By Keith Johnson —

Ever since the Sandy Hook ElementarySchool event in Newtown, Connecticut,more school districts across thenation have given local law enforcementagencies carte blanche to use their staff andstudents as actors and their campuses asstaging grounds for extremely realistic “active-shooter” drills.

And while many school administratorsand law enforcement officials claim thatthese simulations are the best way to help first responders prepare for gun-related violenceon campus, security specialists andpsychologists who spoke with this AMERICAN FREE PRESS reporter insist that these exercisesare largely counterproductive andcontribute to an already out-of-control climate of fear among parents and schoolchildren.

Though most districts are content practicingstandard evacuation and lockdown drills, others feel the need to take it to the next level by stagingfull-scale exercises, complete with realistic gunfire,stage makeup to create fake wounds and studentactors playing the parts of hostages and shooting victims.

“In Missouri, it’s not only a trend, it’s the law,”the report said. “In August 2013, the state legislaturetook a cue from a handful of post-Sandy Hook lawmakers, like the ones in Illinois and Arkansas,and voted to require every school district to conductsimulated shooter drills.”

The report goes on to say that that these drills “aren’t really for kids—they’re meant to help lawenforcement craft strategies to take down activeshooters, as well as to familiarize teachers with thesound of guns and teach them to act quickly.”

Many school security experts familiar with these exercises question their value and are concerned about the traumatic effects they may have on staff and students. Among them is Dr. Scott Poland, a nationally-recognized school psychology expert from Florida’s Center for Child Welfare, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

“These drills are giving kids the impression that school is not a safe place to be and that the next shooting is right around the corner,” Poland told this newspaper. “But in reality, your chances of being a homicide victim at a school in America are 1 in 2.5 million, and that’s according to data from the National Association of School Psychologists.”

Poland went on to say thatother studies have found that20% of all children in Americahave “suffered significanttrauma” in their lives as the result of violence, accidents, natural disasters and countless othertragedies and that exposing these same kids tostaged shooting scenarios could “cause lots of these issues to re-surface” without the proper mentalhealth procedures in place to help them cope.

“The onus of establishing whether or not these drills are harmful rests on those conducting them,”Poland added. “Unfortunately, I’m quite confident that these people are not doing a thorough assessmentof the individual crisis history of students beforesubjecting them to these simulated shootings and role playing exercises.”

That’s not to say that Poland is against emergency preparations for school shootings.

“I’m actually a very big supporter of drills,” hesaid. “But we need to focus on training staff andpracticing lockdowns and evacuations. We don’t need SWAT teams, gunfire or simulated bloodand injury. That level of realism is unnecessaryand can prompt a severe emotional impact on vulnerable students.”

“One unintended consequence could be that a potential school shooter participates in one ofthese drills and learns how to be [a] more effective [killer], utilizing the drill to give him insideinformation on how to run up his kill score,”Levine said.

“Also, common sense and lots of research show us that exposure to violence dis-inhibitspeople to more likely act on violent thoughts,” headded. “And while exposure to such violence will create fear and trauma for some kids, for othersit can be an adrenaline rush that they may acquire a taste for.”

So, if the experts agree that active shooterdrills do more harm than good, what is the bestway to keep schools safe from potential gun violence? How about having armed staff at the readywho can confront a perpetrator before he or shehas a chance to inflict mass casualties? It certainly worked at the Arapahoe High School insuburban Denver.

On December 13, 2013, 18-year-old Karl Halverson Pierson—wearing a bandolier containing shotgun shells and carrying a pump-action shotgun, a machete and a backpack holding three Molotov cocktails—walked onto his high school and managed to murder one student before his potential killing spree came to an abrupt end.

According to CNN, “The rampage might haveresulted in many more casualties had it not beenfor the quick response of a deputy sheriff who was working as a school resource officer at theschool,” said Arapahoe County Sheriff GraysonRobinson. “We know for a fact that the shooter knew that the deputy was in the immediate areaand, while the deputy was containing theshooter, the shooter took his own life.”

Grayson praised the deputy’s response as “acritical element to the shooter’s decision” to killhimself, and lauded his response to hearing gunshots.

“He went to the thunder,” he said. “He heardthe noise of a gunshot and, when many wouldrun away from it, he ran toward it to make other people safe.”

It just goes to show that sometimes the simplestsolution to a problem is right in the palm of your hand.

2 Comments on ‘Bloody’ School Shooting Drills in Vogue

These drills are appalling! Its normalizing massacres. The real problem here are the gun laws. Take away the right to bear arms takes away the devastating implications. Australia took strong action to change the gun laws. And as a result waved massacres away. A different approach to thinking is required to really make a difference. Catering to it is disappointing.

I work at a public high school in northern suburban Atlanta; just two weeks ago, we held an active shooter drill on behalf our county’s sheriff’s office and emergency services. I was involved in the planning of the event at the school end, as well as the debriefing following the drill.

I believe our drill was planned with the utmost forethought to avoid as many of the concerns raised in the article as possible. All of the students participating – approximately 120 juniors and seniors total, only 40 serving as “victims” – were vetted in advance, by me and one other teacher who work intimately with all of those students. We held multiple meetings to brief the students on what to expect, and to give them opportunities to withdraw themselves. In fact, several students policed (if you’ll pardon the pun) their own ranks, bringing up concerns about fellow students they didn’t feel were mature enough to handle participating in the scenario. School personnel and sheriff’s officers spoke to the students and to their parents (students who didn’t attend one of the critical planning meetings or whose parents didn’t sign off on permission slips were barred from participating). In fact, other than the four school personnel and the two school system safety officers who were involved in planning the scenario, the students were the most knowledgeable individuals within the scenario – they knew more about what to expect than did the school staff and administrators, responding officers and EMS, and so forth.

This drill was never intended to be for school system personnel – at least, not local school personnel, not primarily. While we did involve our teachers – holding the drill on a district professional development day – the primary reason for holding this drill was for the training of our county law enforcement and emergency services, who are tasked with responding to such an incident at any of the 36 schools within our district. It also assisted our district safety staff with a look at exactly how they could be most effective in facilitating response to a crisis, should one happen. Every school in the country should have a Crisis Response Plan – we do, and in preparing for this drill, we brought it out and looked at it. Boy, it sure looks good on paper, but the reality is if you are in a true crisis, you won’t have time to pull out a document and see whose bullet-pointed to handle which aspect.

A similar scenario could play out at a private school or childcare, or even a workplace. The point of these drills is to provide as close to a real-world scenario as possible. I spent the drill documenting it via video, and I couldn’t help but notice the looks on some of the faces of the responding officers – it was clear this was the first time they had been in a situation like this. There were flaws in how the various services responded, and interacted with each other. I would much rather have these breakdowns in a simulated environment rather than the real thing. In a school of 2,700 students, scaling up the problems when services were dealing with just a mere 4% of our student body would be chaotic and disastrous.

While it may seem incongruous to those of us wishing that schools looked like those of a bygone era, the truth is that knowledge of such events is present in students’ minds, because of news and information being so readily available to them. These drills prepare first responders for the types of events, settings and scenarios that we all hope they never encounter – but, God forbid they do, we’re glad they prepare for.